


Interlude: Diary of an Incubus

by inter_spem_et_metum



Series: A Thousand Savage Futures [2]
Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: (obvious; see title), Happy Birthday Fey!, Happy Hanniween!, M/M, POV First Person, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Prose Poem, Series Insert, Sexual Content, Tumblr: hannibalcreative, a thousand savage futures, but there's still a three-way (sort of), cannibal humor, demons & stuff, not the wendigo this time, of putrefaction saccharine, ops redux, pining murder husbands, sorry billy, sorry edgar, sorry tom, sorry-not-sorry everybody else, thepumpkinispeople
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-27
Updated: 2016-10-27
Packaged: 2018-08-27 06:27:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8390734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inter_spem_et_metum/pseuds/inter_spem_et_metum
Summary: An otherworldly entity takes a liking to Will. Hannibal isn't keen to share.Chronologically, this ficlet falls within the second half of Eve of Dreams (Le Réveillon des Rêves), the redux/companion story to Of Putrefaction, Saccharine. It isn't directly affiliated with the overall narrative—more of an un-scene, if you will. It can also be read as a standalone if you don’t squint. Imagine a tree trunk fallen between two wormholes. You can use it as a bridge to cross between the two, if you like. Tread carefully, though; the demons are listening…





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [feyestwords](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feyestwords/gifts).



> A tie-in prose poem for the series [_A Thousand Savage Futures._](https://archiveofourown.org/series/515785) I hope you enjoy this little exorcism :)
> 
> This piece is meant to be read aloud—dramatically! Apologies to some favorite poets and playwrights for the bastardized tributes.  
> 

_–Somewhere in the_ æ _ther of æons, in the hour before dawn–_

I've found him. Around him I hovered for nights, in twilight and in shade. _You're going to be mine_ , I thought. Decision made.

His beauty burns. I've yearned for one like _this_ for ages. And the way he dreams! Like ripping apart at the seams. You could say I'm intrigued. Inside, he's fire and ice—burns once, then twice. He tries to hide, but they'll meet in the middle and eat him alive. Licking and chipping the meat of his soul—tenacious, delicious! I shiver to think of the pleasure I'll drink from his heat and his skin. Flavor and fervor I'll savor long after our embers of sin have been smothered. All others I'll push to the side, as I help my unwary new lover _un-hide_.

He's _not_ like the others, though—that, I can sense. He smells of ambrosia and consequence. And saltwater tinged with both honey and blood; the milk of old wounds that still rush, like a flood, through his veins. It's strange—his scars are what seem to _protect_ him. They reflect him, like fragments of mirrors wedged deep in his soul.

That's not all. A cosmos apart, I sense that some presence more savage than mine _possesses_ his heart! What is it, I wonder? This force that repairs him and tears him asunder? Two hearts beat as one, their butterflied organs contracting in rhythm: systole and diastole, union and schism. Ill-fated and forged in some formless black sphere—but not _here_ , not in hell. Perhaps heav'n can tell? The Seraphim _well_ know whose fates have been crossed; what loves have been lost, and whose hearts turned to dust. These they summon by name, from the bloodlust and flames of _our_ demon's domain, with undulating rush of breath—and feyest whispers of three deaths born on a dragon's wings and tides…

Or maybe it's among the Nephilim his benefactor hides? My senses spin with what's possessed him. Tempter-sent, or tempest-tossed? I'll find out when I take him! My intuition's lost in his dysphoric eyes—so fathomless and wide, a vast empire of tidal blues and grays. They see too much when he's asleep; too little, now, when wide awake. Burn to black, rolling back as he gasps in his dreams; no slake for that drought, so it seems. His protector is a specter in his nightly reveries—a ghost! No mortal life's without one. Conjoined they may be, but unholy unions are _my_ specialty—and I _won't_ be outdone!

Still, within his face, such haggard grace! A Nightmare may have put it there, or a djinni dreaming somewhere fair, and far away. I want to _say_ a Nightmare may have had his way with him before… but like our kind, the Nightmares never share. All's fair in love and celestial war, they say. Perhaps an angel prays for him? I wouldn't be surprised. Sometimes we Lilin pass them in our flight; they rarely fight—but _this one's_ angel might. (I hope to Lord and Lucifer he does!)

He doesn't dream of angels, though— _my_ mortals never do. _Then what, or who, is guarding you?_ I muse. No man or beast could feast for long on such a fever-fazèd mind. It shines, a blazing beacon flame for demon-kind! Morose maroons and reds, inside his head loom scenes of death, depraved; but also azure, gold, and green for the harvest skies and autumn trees he craves. He knows the water, too—the river runs within his veins. _I_ will become a blazing rain, set him aflame, sear with his tides; fire clay from his heart's dust. I'll find the currents where he hides, to quench my lust, to make him _mine_.

I'll give him something warming first—a spark of missing memory. He'll sense and tense within me, as I let him taste my presence. A river's essence is to bend; and so his mind will rend, and yield _all_ of his desires—all the passions, fears, and fires he aspires to put out but won't—or _can't_. I'll suck them up like poison, hope, or passion—things all mortals cling to in a fashion both implacable and bold, until they're very old, or on the edge of death… All things fall away between the cliff, and one's last breath.

I take up my brush, and paint for him this delicate design:

 _We're in Florence this week. A little chilly when we first got here, but he says that's just the mornings. He was right. He took me to see the boar statue in the Mercato Nuovo today, like he promised. We both rubbed its nose and put coins in its mouth (a little weird, but he insisted it was tradition; "fine," I said, "if it makes you smile"—it did), then poked around in the stalls. More jackets and handbags and scarves than I've ever seen shoved into one space. We left, both smelling of leather. Then had dinner at a restaurant with yellow walls and an ivy terrace and a nice house Chianti. He walked close on the way back. I could feel the warmth practically radiating from him. Now he's sitting in the window of our room, sketching the Duomo. It's beautiful, lit up at night—almost like a beacon._ He's _beautiful, too. (When did I start to think that?) He might as well be_ my _beacon now. I don't know how to tell him that without sounding drunker than I am. I can't remember the boar's name. Something with a P? Will have to remember to ask him._

This paint is thick with chiaroscuro. A shadow base—a satin taste. His body stretches in its sleep; lean muscles ripple inside skin, and bones stretch underneath. A body longing, hot and tense; a mind withholding, senses dense with love and loss and lingering—his kindling, the razor edge on which he dances. How he sweats, how his feet bleed! Still, his need exceeds his anguish. It's his Achilles' heel; it's how I'll feel my way in. It isn't sin if you invite it… I might even _eat_ his soul to spite it! His mystery lover's, too— _if_ I can find it.

It's strange… A shadow cloaks this other's features like a drape, a cloud; cumulonimbus in form and shape. But shrouded in the gloom, I see his eyes are glinting, haunted, proud. No silver lining there, but lightning flashes. Thunder, _yes_ —in claps and crashes! A vision: fingers flash on black and ivory keys; a pulsing, lovelorn melody that bleeds to stumbling desire, and brings the lover to his knees…

It rumbles like a storm, or fire, through my gray-eyed mortal's bones. He moans; he sees this lover often in his dreams. A penance dour! He _misses_ him, it seems—more by the hour. More than he wants or thinks he should—his punishment for righting wrongs in ways a _bit_ not good. His ache builds to a swell, and with it nameless sorrow. The guilt, it wilts him; but I'll suck that out of him as well—tomorrow.

 

_–Earth, 29.9511°N, 90.0715°W, shortly after midnight–_

Nocturne. Hiccup! Thought he'd never find his way to sleep, but here we are, and he's in deep. I'm going to steer tonight. His dreams may take a dreadful, splendid turn; but he'll learn—the images I give are gifts! I'll teach him some philosophy about the way we Lilin see the shifts in mortal lives and lies and love, and what they look like from above. (Or far below, if hell is indeed _slow_ to settle, as the poets say.) _"More things in heav'n and earth,"_ a bard once penned. But the _things_ I'll bring into his bed tonight won't mend his slipping sense of worth, or his woeful understanding of the beauty he's undone…

What's this? His lover hovers darkly, like a shade over the sun. A ghost indeed! He can't eclipse my prowess; this soundless, threatless specter comes to naught. A ghastly, cursèd beauty, theirs may be—but _human_ -wrought. The answer to the mystery I chase is caught between my mortal's lips—a living lie. _Tonight_ he'll see his lover's face—and so will I!

I flicker my baton, and rouse an orchestra of skin and sweat that crushes. My mortal's solo heartbeat rushes from staccato to crescendo as I brush my mouth to his:

 _He stirs; his hand flops heavy on my chest. Is he asleep? I don't remember getting here. As in, the bed—together. We didn't drink_ that _much at dinner. I freeze. His palm is an alien warmth. Fingertips flexing on my skin, unaware. Unawake. I'm dressed in sheets—nothing else. I reach out without even thinking. Then his body's under my hands, firm and hard and warm, like I am. Like we_ both _are. His arm jerks and his eyes open, and suddenly he's staring at me through the dark. A secret, pointed look that I can't begin to unravel. He can feel my hand on his thigh. Shit. He knows it wasn't an accident. His eyes are dark and hooded and glinting, and his fingertips drag against my chest, intentional now._ Hungry. _He doesn't say a word. He shifts, his body moving closer, deciding_ for _him, for_ us _, before we can think twice about what's happening. And that's all it takes._

I slide beside his lover as my hands move with his hands; the lusty traces of our fingers land aside sandpaper cheekbones, pressing close and pulling in. Lips meet at last! Lazy with slumber, then rough with need. Amid my mortal's murmured pleas, desire swells, as eyelids flutter closed on ocean-blue: _If you came back to me, or I came back to you… would we still hate what we've become?_

The answer's lost inside the thrum of heartbeats and the warming slide of bodies, three together—mine, amorphous in the æther, caught within my mortal's dream; and his lover's, just a memory; a fading pulse of flesh and grief banished across the sea.

The third heartbeat—my mortal's own—propelled by blood, sinew, and bone, pulsates beneath his lover's heated breast and in my ears; together, he and I can _hear_ the coil of love and anger winding tight in our beloved's mind, threatening to snap, to break. It's time to _take_ him, make him ours—then mine, and _only_ mine—a savory prize for demon-kind!

I move myself between my mortal's thighs, within the spaces in his sighs; _I'll_ be his lover now. I crave to turn his body's key, to pry his mind in two; I'll use his lover's form to seize the flesh and breath I'm due. His right hand will release the rest; his slumb'ring limbs demon-possessed, as the noblest clerics like to say. ( _Nota bene:_ those blessèd men we visit nightly, as is the Lilin way.)

Possession and obsession overwhelm me as I gaze into my mortal's face. Sorrow and grace within his sightless, dreaming stare; a lust laid bare in haunting, twilight hues. His eyes of ocean grays and blues, his skin as pale as china—slick and tight and scented with the sea, and _finer_ than ambrosia. Such tender riches! His breathing hitches as our fingers trace the place where stitches once adorned his brow. Half a crown of thorns his shadowed lover gave him once, I sense—a heavy recompense for wounds inflicted, then regifted. The hurts between them shift like waves; a give-and-take that damns and saves and echoes with the ebbing of their tides.

So _this_ is where my mortal hides! Not only in the black well of his own mind, but inside his lover's, too! I feel their memories merging, currents rushing through the corner-ends of time and hell. The sick-sweet smell of death envelops them, and seizes me within it; I wrestle, writhe, and spin, but can't begin to break my rival's icy bands. He moves his mouth and hands from brow to chest, from chest to scar-seared belly. My mortal's body trembles underneath, caught by this spell he's craved for years—a tremolo I can almost feel; a lover's flesh _almost_ made real.

The water here is swirling, dark, and dense with blood; it floods my mouth and warps my demon's fiery lungs. Thick on their tongues, slick on their flesh, their scars protect them still—and nothing in heav'n or earth can kill such cursèd, deadly gifts! Although these rifts that bind can also be _consumed_ —a blood-feast hot and red, a smorgasbord of wounds. Raw skin, raw hearts, raw love—mine for the taking! If I can shove aside my mortal's aching, and devour his lover's icy soul and steal his breath, I'll win them both! And yet their strangling oath of death disarms me, bars me from their shade. _What_ kind of hellish passion pact have these star-crossed lovers made?

My mortal moans as lips caress the tender skin between his hip and groin—a teasing, pleasing slide of tongue—but mouth and hands _not mine!_ He stretches, presses back against the cotton, fingers stroking, stoking coals of burning dream desire. It seems _I_ should've sparked the fire that's inspired all this pleasure! But his lover's clever—selfish, moving at his leisure, and unyielding in his greed for flesh and heart and heat. Ripping apart their meat would make my rival cede the _flesh_ to me, at least; but without his shadowed lover, my mortal's dreams grow cold and weak—and my survival in this game, too bleak.

Another flick of tongue I _almost_ taste, as lips trace words on downy skin… then further in… and farther down… my blue-eyed mortal gasps as lips surround his stiffened flesh. I hiss. _Enough!_ This bliss, this consummation should belong to _me!_ No lover lost, or flung across the sea, can take away the prize I've bargained for. I spread my blazing wings and roar! A chorus of demon voices swells with fiendish force (for hell has choirs too, of course) to vindicate my ire and inspire my rival's fear. I'll summon wind and fire to tear those reddened lips away from where my demon's barb will pierce and play and pound—no mercy to be found within _this_ pleasure prison!

But in my mortal's sleeping vision, their pulses race and thrum together. With open throat and skillful tongue, his cunning lover's run his body right up to the edge—and _still_ he holds me off!

 _You think you'll win?_ I scoff. _You can't_ begin _to comprehend the depths of pain we Lilin-kind retain for those who try to cheat us at our game. You dance a line of flame and danger, lover!_

He doesn't flinch; but reaches up to cover my mortal's thund'ring heartbeat with his palm. Not to calm, but to ignite him with my stolen fire, trussed up on on this pyre of lust and pain they've built, from too much hunger, ire, and guilt. But then his shadowed lover lifts and tilts his head—and then he speaks! The sound is wilted, silken-soft; as thin as tattered leaves. One syllable he breathes, rife with forlorn and aching: _Will, my Will… Why have you taken yourself so far away from me?_

My mortal's eyes are wide and wet, his pupils shot to black; his trembling fingers knot around his lover's head to drag him back, to pull him close. _Belial's balls!_ I shout. _How lachrymose and maudlin!_ That's it—enough of stalling, doubt, and dawdling. Here's my opportunity to free us of this ghost! I'll push my rival's dream-form from my mortal's mind and commandeer his post, and not a trace of argument I'll hear! The hour is near—no more need to seize his lover's soul or see his face. This race for consummation's almost over. Soon, my victory I'll taste!

The shadowed one moves in again—all calm, no haste; lips slick, teeth bared to graze. His darkened eyes are gleaming as they meet my mortal's glassy gaze. A ragged beauty hangs between them, raw and rare—knife-bright; two bloodied lifelines mirrored in a slice of light. And then my rival bows his head, as if in prayer. I make to pounce, to flare my fiery storm and set my demon's snare. His mouth moves down—and then he stops. I frown. _What now?_

My rival's hands are quick— _too_ quick. A push, a rip, a blinding flash, and suddenly I crash headlong into the very flesh I'd made to claim—my mortal's own! I moan in shame, flesh-bound, assaulted by his pleasure. His lover's thunder clashes, halts and rends the measure of my devilish design. _Indecorous!_ _Impossible!_ I cry. _This frenzied lust belongs to Lilin-kind, not figments of a mortal mind!_

 _This is no human dream, my demon friend._ That _voice!_ It bends and binds me. A scream unwinds me, tearing through my naked throat. My rival gloats, hot slide of tongue on rigid flesh, undoing his beloved—and _me_ —with waves of vulgar ecstasy. My mortal's currents roil, hot and white, pleasure uncoiling and recoiling tight with each imagined stroke and suck.

I duck, and make to flee—but my escape is dashed! My mortal's hand is moving fast now, as his thighs begin to shake. Then his floodgates start to loosen—then to break.

I struggle up on heavy limbs. _You've stolen him!_ I cry. _You_ and _your gray-eyed lover both will die, and take my place in hell! Now show your face to me as well, or dead and damned you'll be!_

The shadowed one raises his head—and then, and only then—I _see_. He grins, and gazes through the æther, _straight at me._ Terror seizes, freezes in my bones, and quells the demon-chorus' song. _O Lucifer_ , _O Lord,_ I moan, _I was so wrong!_ What first I missed, too late's revealed! Not man nor beast is here concealed, nor thing of evil—angel, djinn, or devil. But a _Nightmare_ in its purest form—one made, not born, of putrefaction saccharine! A cloying, fetid vision toying with his lover's dreams… unless my blue-eyed human's not as mortal as he seems?

 _What was forged amid the roar of that surf-tormented, bloody shore?_ I call. _Between the motion and the act—between the ocean and the fall—between desire, and the spasm, and the horror of it all! Are you but two Dreams within a dream?_

 _You might want to relax,_ his lover snarls. _It seems you'd benefit. In fact, I'm recommending it. What comes next will be a first for you—somewhat transcendent, I should think. My thirst is due for slaking, and you'll make the perfect drink. Meanwhile, I'll be taking what's been mine, and_ only _mine, for years… for as you know, like Lilin-kind, we Nightmares never share._

The dark one lowers his head again, curls greedy lips 'round lover's flesh—and then my mortal Dream is screaming, keening—the two conjoined, now one; fully enmeshed. Hands grapple hips; the other's fingers grip his Nightmare's hair—lust meant to rip, to tear; a climax red and roaring, like some blood-tsunami soaring, crashes forth. And through this phantom body, my own demon-spirit rushes toward the earth!

His lover sucks me out and down into the black vault of his throat; he drinks me raw, in bursts of ocean salt that coat his lips and jaw and chin. My rival grins, victorious and sated! His lover's panting breaths abated by a lick and a caress. And I, consumed within their consummation, doomed to be digested, like the rest.

The Nightmare wipes a hand across his mouth. _We've made a mess_ , _it seems,_ he smirks.

 _Yes, but,_ his Dream replies, _it worked._ _Looks like you've drowned him, finally. That demon's dreams were_ killing _me._

Oh carnal and unnatural act! Such casual slaughter! Inside the belly of the beast I drift on rank seawater, dissolving in the acids of this Nightmare's rancid feast. Still, I can speak to the yet-unknowing world, to tell how these things came about. My accidental judgment, and their cunning clout, combined to douse my demon's fire and arrest my treasured lust!

These warning words, I trust, will keep my kindred safe from harm, and help unmask the skin-deep charms of Dreams who worm their way inside our heads, disguised as men. Take heed! Inside their beds, their lovers feed on our salacious powers. It's how I met _my_ savage end. Disarmed, and then voraciously devoured as erotic prey—indeed, as is the Lilin way.


End file.
